You obviously missed the part about the really heavy boots.
I was talking with a Parks Police officer once, she was out enforcing fishing licenses, etc. Somehow, the subject of moths came up. She was convinced that moths became butterflies. According to her, the life-cycle is: caterpillar, cocoon, moth, pupa, butterfly. I was embarrassed for her, especially after I gently corrected her.
Oh, that’s not all I missed. This whole thread has become a nightmare for me! Can a moderator please tone down that stupid Red Forman quote to a manageable size? (Apparently, my idea of 6 point type and SDMB’s idea are worlds apart.)
I apologize for screwing up a perfectly good thread. I’ll just go home now and write letters to the editor. With a fountain pen.
North flowing rivers aren’t all that rare. There’s the McKenzie, Red, Nile, Lena, Rhine and those are only the ones I can think of off-hand.
That makes more sense. It is an unfortunately widespread belief in the U.S.
The St. John’s River in Jacksonville flows north. But that’s only because Georgia sucks.
I was asking this very question last night, when I caught a bit of David Letterman’s show. He’s got a thing now, called “will it float?” where he takes a given object and has it dropped into a pool of water to find out–well, you get the point. Last night it was a big can of evaporated milk, and Dave and Paul were speculating based on the fact that it was a 97 oz. can. I kept wanting to say, “Folks, it doesn’t matter how much it weighs–it’s the density that matters.” Dave and Paul did not seem to grasp that point, but I guess that’s how most people view the thing.
Yeah, most people really are that ignorant.
I remember a really misguided nun, teaching me cathecism.
She insisted on the whole “earth is at the center of the universe, the stars are little light-points”-schtick.
However she didn’t count on having a really precocious, absolutely logical-minded 7-year-old who, coincidentally, had gotten an astronomy book for his birthday.
Man, was I riled!
Well, in Switzerland, everybody seems to believe that all rivers run downhill! I keep on arguing with people about it but they persist in their preconceived idea.
I think you’re missing the point of “Will it Float?” It’s supposed to be dumb.
Actually, the Moon only has about one eightieth of the Earth’s gravity. However, astronauts on the surface experienced about one sixth the gravitational force of the Earth’s surface, because they were closer to the center of the Moon’s gravity than you would be to the center of Earth’s gravity.
I hope that doesn’t seem as garbled to you as it does to me.
The one that really gets me is my sister in law. She convinces that side of the family into all kinds of crazy stuff including a 20 vitamin a day regime to treat my FIL’s prostate cancer. She recently talked my pregnant wife into buying whole cases of “ultra-purified” water made with “medical grade oxygen”. The stuff costs $3 a bottle but my SIL assured my wife it was the only way that her cells could stay properly hydrated late in pregnancy. It took me hours to undo that damage.
I shouldn’t be too hard on my SIL though. She retired from Chemical Engineering a few years ago and now works as a lowly professor of Health Psychology. She just doesn’t know any better.
Technically the Mississippi runs uphill. Because of the equatorial bulge its mouth is further from the center of the earth than is its source.
This pretty much sums up a day at work for me in my last job.
Being the resident “smart guy” I was regualrly asked for advice on things like computer purchases.
Cow-orker: Drach, what kind of computer should I buy
Me: Well whats the most important thing to you, speed, storage, ability to burn CD’s?
Cow-orker: I needs to be black!
Me: :smack:
Yes, they really are.
How many times do I have to explain the concept of a uterus to a woman who has just given birth?
A c/section is not a hysterectomy. You will have lochia. (That reddish stuff you’re leaking.)
No, the baby doesn’t really grow in your stomach.
In the Southern Hemisphere, of course, they run uphill.
I once spent an entire afternoon arguing with an ex-boyfriend who insisted that if you could fly a plane around the world over the International Date Line enough times, you could go back in time. I’m talking time-travel. I could not convince him otherwise.
Also, the mother of my best friend in high school insisted that dinosaurs never existed. She claimed that “dinosaur bones” are really “just big horse bones”. She was dead serious.
And clockwise!
Along similar lines, my sister had a hysterectomy for excessive bleeding–they took the uterus but left the ovaries as she’s only 43 and there’s nothing wrong with them. She was absolutely astounded to discover that she still has PMS even though she doesn’t have periods any more. :rolleyes: I told her that technically what she has now is UMS (Ugly Mood Swings.)
Oh, and next time I cross over the Willamette I’ll give it a stern lecture about going the wrong way. I’m sure that will have a sudden and noticeable effect…
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of medical ignorance, can we give a big ol’ bitchslap to all the morons who equate vasectomy with orchidectomy, or who insist that they either won’t ejaculate at all or that volume will be drastically decreased? Sperm is just the tiniest little part of semen guys, and the boys will be right where you left 'em the last time you scratched, okay? :smack: :wally